The Quest for Happiness - in life and at work

The Quest for Happiness - in life and at work. That's a pretty lofty title to an article, huh?

One of my favorite speakers/authors/people to follow on social media is Jane McGonigal. The first time I ever heard her speak was in 2011 at an ISTE conference in Austin, TX, where she talked about her latest book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.  She then asked the entire audience (20,000+) to play a game of thumb wars. Side note, I think we set a Guinness World Record that day for largest number of people playing thumb wars at one time.

Since that conference, I have been an active follower of McGonigal on twitter (her handle is @avantgame if you want to check it out), and I keep an eye out for new material. Last year, I stumbled across her TED talk, The game that can give you 10 extra years of life. It's about 20 minutes long, and if you take time to watch it (and play along during the talk), you can add about 7 minutes to your life span!

Jane McGonigal - TED Talk 2012

I decided to take Jane's talk and turn it into an interactive workshop for managers and employees. The first step was to get people interested, so I had to come up with a catchy name, and "The Quest for Happiness - in Life and at Work" was created.  Within about 10 minutes of posting the session, the registration maxed out, and I started hearing from people asking how they could get on the waiting list.  "The Quest for Happiness" was a very popular theme!

Here's a breakdown of the workshop:
Introduction: Spoiler alert: there is no magic pill for happiness. We are not giving away the secrets of life in this session.
Warning: we are going to make references to science and math, so be prepared.
Let's Get Started:  We led our audience in the same activities Jane did during her TED talk. A roomful of about 60 people did exercises in Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Social Resilience, and we talked about how doing things from each of these categories each day help make for a happier and healthier life.
Let's Talk About It:  Finally, we broke into groups and got people talking with each other and thinking about ways to incorporate those things into their daily routine at work.

The ideas people came up with were simple - and most of them were inexpensive.  Walking meetings and regular recognition - these are ways you can get people out of their same old work routine and add a few brain cells and synapses while you are at it.

If you have time, I recommend watching McGonigal's TED talk this week. And if you would like more information about the interactive workshop, send me a note or a comment, and I will be happy to share!

What I've Learned - Work and Grad-School

Earlier this year, I posted (on other social media) that I've started back to school! I'm taking classes online through Troy University (Go Trojans!), working on a Masters in Management, with concentration in leadership. 

The first course in the program was a doozy - A Survey of Business Concepts. Basically, this course was a review of everything you would study as a business undergrad crammed into 9 weeks! For me, as a former ENGLISH major, it was a big challenge. Most of the topics were new to me, but thankfully, after 20 years working in the business/corporate world, I had apparently soaked up some of the concepts via osmosis. I made it through the course, and decided, since I am still working full time, I'd be sticking to one course per term.

My second course was on Theories of Organizational Behavior. A fancy title, but the course focused on motivating and managing employees in an organization. We examined different types of behavior at work, and how to handle working with people with different attitudes and skills.

This term, I'm taking Leading and Developing High Performance Teams. So far, I'm really liking it. We're looking at how to structure your team, depending on the tasks and relationships involved. Looking at why it's important to have a mix of personalities and styles, instead of employee clones, so you can look at challenges from different perspectives.

NOTE: now that I'm taking classes that are more focused and related to topics that I'm comfortable with, I'm considering taking more than one class per term. But I'll keep you posted on that.

In general, I'm loving being back in school. Of course, the second-time around, I'm much more interested in the assignments -  AND it's forcing me to get back in the writing groove. I'm turning some of my discussion posts for class into blog posts, so you'll see these educational-themed posts sprinkled in among my usual topics. I want to share some of the videos and articles we're reading in class - I hope you'll find them interesting!

Question of the day: Have you taken any classes while working full time? What are some challenges you faced? Or if you have been putting it off, what's stopping you?

Building a Cohesive Team

The concept of “cohesion” in groups or teams describes to what extent the individuals rely on each other for support and to achieve team goals.  In my assignment for class this week, the textbook explains that there are two types of cohesion: socio-emotional cohesion, which describes teams that genuinely like each other and enjoy working together; and instrumental cohesion, teams that rely on each team member to do their part to get the job done (Kreitner & Kinicki, pg. 314).  Typically, team leaders focus on managing each individual, and do not take into account how to create cohesion by managing at the team level.  With the right coaching and combination of skills, managers can guide individuals to work together and accomplish much more than they could on their own.

Who’s who?  Remember back in high school, when everyone cast their vote for “most likely to succeed,” and “biggest jock”?  You probably have some hidden talents on your team, and you never know when those talents might come in handy. Make an effort to look past the resume and the job history, and find out what else your team is up to. 

I'm getting some feedback...

Typically, if you say the word “feedback,” I immediately tense up and am taken back to any number of awkward interactions, usually scheduled around the time of an annual review, in which I had to list my biggest accomplishments for the previous year and talk about the things I wanted to work on in the upcoming year.  The feedback I then received from my manager usually ended up being a “keep up the good work,” and “same time next year.”

Of course, the idea of feedback has changed very much.  According to Krietner and Kinicki, the two main functions of feedback should be to instruct and to motivate.  Managers who take time to provide instructional and motivational feedback to their employees are influencing individuals and as a result, building stronger teams. 

Looking to up your feedback game? Try to make your feedback: 

Theory Y and the Modern Manager

Theory Y is a set of positive assumptions describing employees’ attitudes about work. The Theory Y philosophy is that if you trust your employees and give them responsibilities and meaningful work, they will rise to the challenge.  Employees will be more committed to their job and an organization if they are in an environment that encourages and rewards self-direction, creativity, and innovation (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2016).  Managers have a lot of influence over an employee’s environment.  In a Theory Y-led organization, managers can use that influence to create an atmosphere where employees are empowered to make independent decisions that positively influence the organization.  

Want to embrace Theory Y philosophy? Try to incorporate one or all of these things into your day-to-day routine:

Caring vs. Justice? What's Your Ethical Style?

In class this week, I had to complete an ethical orientation questionnaire. The quiz was 9 questions evaluating whether I tend to use a "Caring" or a "Justice" mentality when dealing with ethical situations. My score was 5 for the "Justice" orientation and 4 for the "Caring" orientation. At first, I thought this was probably a bad sign - that my scores were split down the middle. Using an ethic of justice might remove some of the emotion from a decision, lending it to a right vs. wrong outlook. Using an ethic of caring would allow for each situation to be examined on an individual basis. After I read a bit more of the explanation, I realized that an even score would probably benefit me, since I can see both perspectives, and I hope that I would use the appropriate amount of caring and justice to determine the right decision for any given situation.

Starting a new job? 5 things you can do to make a good impression!

For the past 6 years I’ve been responsible for a training program that brings in a group of new employees, right out of school, and gives them an opportunity to learn about our organization and participate in hands-on job shadowing rotations over the course of a year.  During this one-year process, I get to witness their ups and downs of starting a new job and wondering “what’s next,” and along the way I offer feedback about their individual performances: “If you know you get sleepy in the afternoon, maybe you should become friends with the coffee machine.”  Every so often I give advice and answer questions on how to handle work-situations:  “Is it okay to email a top executive directly?”  My answer is usually “Yes,” followed with a quick, “but it depends.” (It’s always ok to thank someone for their time or follow up on an initial meeting. It’s not ok to email a list of your suggestions for “things we need to improve” if it’s your first week on the job.)

My new group just started work a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it’d be a good time to share some of my most frequent “make a good impression” pointers as they’re starting their careers: